


atlas

by flagpoles



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Highschool! Au, i love them have i mentioned i love them bc i do
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-11 23:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7912390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flagpoles/pseuds/flagpoles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Amy that is exactly something a dying person would say.”</p>
<p>“No it isn’t. I will leave you here if you keep talking about me dying.”</p>
<p>or: HIGH SCHOOL AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> send me prompts for this! im on tumblr at jiilys

“Santiago! You wore your special occasion’s headband for me, the one with the visible stitching!”

 

Amy doesn’t bother to point out that this isn’t even her special occasions headband, it’s her Thursday one, but whatever. The joke’s on Peralta for not knowing. He’s beaming, already holding about thirty balloons that all say ‘Jakey’ on them, so they're from Charles, and a plain white piece of paper with ‘Happy Birthday’ written on it with sharpie, so Rosa’s given him her card, and Gina has also been around because his hair is covered in glitter and he’s wearing a badge that says ‘BIRTHDAY BITCH’ with a Floorgasm sticker on it. He has left a trail of glitter down the hall, glinting against the linoleum.

 

“Peralta, don’t you think wearing a shirt that says ‘ITS MY BIRTHDAY’ with-“ she performs a mental count “-fourteen exclamation points on it is a little much?”

 

Jake looks down, pulling out his shirt as if she couldn’t see if from fifty feet away. “of course it’s not, Charles had it specially made.”

 

“You don’t say.”

 

“Its custom fit!” he looks back up at her, still grinning. Against her will, she softens. His birthday always turns him into an idiot. Truthfully, everything turns him into an idiot.

 

“So” he waggles his eyebrows, “what’d ya get me?”

 

“Who says I got you anything?”

 

“Well” he ticks off on his fingers, “it’s my birthday, you’re standing by my locker, and you’re holding more papers than the average morning Santiago. Also, I told you yesterday that if you didn’t get me anything I would never speak you again, so.”

 

“That was actually an incentive.”

 

“No it wasn’t. Every word I say is a gift.”

 

She rolls her eyes and strongly considers hitting him. But it is his birthday, and he would probably see the cut on her knuckle and then ask about it, so then she would have to tell him about punching Robbie Elliot in the mouth for calling her spreadsheets a waste of time and trying to dump them in the bin during a partially high stress student council meeting yesterday. Jake would have a field day, he would probably hang up posters and hijack the morning announcements to share the news.

 

Amy hands him the manila folder with ‘Jake’ written in clean print across the top line. He looks down at it, back at her, and then raises his eyebrows.

 

“I swear Amy if you’re going to make me read on my _birthday-“_

“Just open it.”

 

He continues to look at her. She sighs, rolling her eyes again.

 

“It’s bullet pointed.”

 

“That’s what I wanna hear.” He opens it and flicks through, touching the corners. It’s fifteen pages long, and took two weeks to assemble, primarily because it involved cross referencing and Gina would only correspond with her via email because she won’t speak to Amy for longer than seven minutes in the hall, least someone see them. She thinks he’ll like it. She thinks. _Oh God, what if he hates it. What if he’s never gotten a birthday present this bad. She should’ve gotten him the ‘Die Hard’ stationary set. What if he hates it? What if he-_

“Santiago-“he looking at her again, grin spreading across his face, “what is this.”

 

“It’s a list of every dumb, attention seeking stunt you’ve pulled since freshmen year, so you’ll always be able to read it and reminisce about the moments you were centre of attention- your favourite kind of attention.”

 

He’s beaming now, and there is some glitter in his teeth. “Oh my God, Amy, this is excellent. This is the best thing you’ve _ever_ done for me.” He flicking through it again, and she lets herself breathe. _He likes it. He likes it. The whole thing isn’t a gigantic failure._

 

“You’ll find it’s categorised by date, starting with our first day when you left a spoon in the microwave and caused a fire emergency, to three days ago when Rosa dared you to eat a stick of chalk and you ended up vomiting in Professor Dozerman’s top desk drawer.”

 

“Hey, you even included that time I told everyone that you killed the homeroom goldfish by putting Oreo’s in the bowl when it was actually me and Gina!”

 

She crosses her arms over her chest and tries desperately not to smile, because when it happened- at fourteen- she’d sworn she was never going to speak to him again. She’d tried to hold a trial during homeroom to clear her name. She’d gotten the janitor to testify to her character.

 

Jake laughed. “Do you remember how you got the janitor to testify to your character?”

 

“No.” she said.

 

“Oh my God, and you made a gavel out of popsicle sticks and paid Rosa to be the judge? And then she ruled _against_ you.”

 

Amy points at him accusingly, “that was only because you gave her a twenty during the recess! And you kept interrupting my defence to say stuff like ‘Santiago is 100% guiltily’ and ‘I will not rest until she hangs for her crimes’!”

 

Jake is leaning against the locker, shaking from laughter and- shit- she’s smiling now. She’d been so mad at him then, refusing to speak to him for a week until he stood up in the middle of English and confessed. Wench had given him detention for a week for interrupting, and she had waited for him outside until he was done so she could walk him home and laugh at how he had to write ‘I am a buffoon’ 700 times with a blunt pencil.

 

“Amy” he says, recovering and holding up the folder, “This is honestly great. I love it. Thank you.”

 

“Oh, ah, thanks.” It probably ranks as one of the sincerest things he’s ever said to her. She’s floored.

 

“Now, I need you to help hide me from Gina, she’s choreographed a ‘special dance’ for me and is threatening to perform it in a public place. I need you to give me an umbrella or something so she won't see me.”

 

Amy is already pulling out her phone and dialing, pressing it to her ear. “What are you doing?” Jake asks.

 

“I’m calling Gina to give her your exact location.”

 

“Santiago!”

 

“Jake, you can't say ‘Gina has made up a special dance and wants to perform it in front of me with people watching’ and expect me to do nothing. Be reasonable- Oh, Gina, I’m with Jake by his locker. He really, _really_ wants to see the dance you’ve made up for him. He also wants you to mention his name as many times as possible when you do it, just so _everyone_ knows that it’s for him.”

 


	2. a tranquill hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i decided to make everything one work because its easier and because im shit at titles

“Alright, let’s just calm down, look at the facts.”

  
“THERE AREN’T ANY FACTS THAT IS THE PROBLEM.”

 

Jake does that thing where he opens and closes his mouth like an idiot before reaching up to rub his hair, already everywhere. The librarian is giving Amy a bitchy look for yelling and she’s considering giving him the finger.

 

“They were all there this morning.”

 

Amy resists the urge to throw herself out the window.

 

“You checked this morning.”

 

“I checked Santiago! I checked, like, four times! You put an alarm on my phone about it and then _another_ one so I wouldn’t just snooze it! It wouldn’t have been possible for me to check anymore! I checked so much I-”

 

“Alright.” Amy holds up a hand and turns back to the computer again. The USB continues to be empty. Maybe, she reasons, the presentation will be cancelled. Maybe Dozerman will come in and say ‘I was kidding about that presentation. Let’s all sit down and sing a song.’ Oh God, that might actually be worse. She is a terrible singer.

 

“Amy.” Jake’s biting his lip, still pacing. “What are we going to do? Dozerman told us no make ups. He said” – he does his Dozerman impression- “there will be no makeups.” He bites his lip again.

 

She has reached a strange, serene calm. She’s gone through the five stages of grief at lightning speed.  Finally, after years of needlessly worrying, the worst has happened. She is going to fail an assessment, an assessment worth half her grade. She will fail, and she and Jake will be the only ones who don’t present, and it will be awful. It’s ridiculous, she should be freaking out but she just can't muster the energy. The whole thing is out of her control.

 

“Amy.” Jake is talking again, looking at her. “I swear I checked. I'm not lying I really did-“

 

“I believe you.” She says, taking a breath. She’s going to fail an assessment and unbelievably, the world continues. “We’re going to fail.”

 

He gapes. “ _What.”_

She stands up from the computer, taking out the USB and throwing it in the bin. “It’s too late to find all the information again. We’re going to have to tell Dozerman what happened and he’s probably going to fail us.”

 

He is still staring.

 

“Jake, it’ll be…” she can't say fine, even in this state, “happening. I've accepted it.”

 

“Are you dying? Santiago, are you terminally ill or something? Wait- if you are, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. No, actually, tell me. Do you only have months to live? Have you had a brain transpl-“

 

“Jake. I’m not dying.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes”

 

“That is something a dying person would say.”

 

“No it isn’t. I will leave you here with the mean librarian if you keep talking about me dying.”

 

He raises his eyebrows at her. “You seem way to calm about this.”

 

“I know. I think I'm so stressed that my brain has stopped reacting to bad news. Let’s go tell Dozerman while I'm still like this, I don’t know when it could wear off.”

 

“Jeez, this is so weird. I keep waiting for you to hit me or shove the USB down my throat or something. Are you sure you’re not dying?”

 

“Keep talking about me dying Peralta and I’ll shove the USB up your-“

 

“ALRIGHT let’s go see Dozerman, super-cool-and-calm Amy who-would-not-harm-a-friend.”


	3. illegality generally

“This is technically illegal.”

 

“Underage drinking shouldn’t really count as illegal. Everyone does it.”

 

“That is not in any way how the law works.” Amy informs Jake, and Rosa leans over to take her beer. “Hey!”

 

“Stop lecturing.”

 

Amy reaches over and takes Jake’s beer while half glaring at Rosa. “I thought underage drinking was illegal?” he smirks at her, eyebrows raised and lying across Charles living room carpet.

 

“I wasn’t being disproving I was just commenting on its illegality.”

 

“Amy if you keep saying things like ‘illegality’ Rosa is gunna steal your beer again.” Gina comments from where she's lying upside down on the couch. Supposedly to ‘mix up’ her blood flow.

 

“Don’t pretend you know me.” Rosa says to Gina and then to Amy: “I will take your beer if you keep saying crap like that.”

 

“Guys! The cosmos are ready!” Charles trills, walking in with a tray of pink drinks. He’s holding a packet of mini umbrellas in one hand, and sets the try down to put one in each drink. Rosa reaches for once instantly.

 

“I love cosmos.”

 

Jake looks delighted. He reaches over and takes his beer back from Amy, who has reached for the tray and is fending off Charles’s attempt to put at least fourteen more umbrellas in her drink. “I didn’t know you liked cosmos.”

 

Rosa glares. “I don’t” she says, actively drinking one.

 

Jake looks confused. “But you just sai--“

 

Rosa reaches over and hits the end of Jakes beer so it slops all down his front. Charles rushes up to get paper towels and Gina lets out a joyous “Ha!” and posts it to her Snapchat story. Amy grins.

 

“Nice look Peralta.”

 

“Thanks” Jake splutters, and Amy grins wider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LOVE ROSA


End file.
